Here’s a quote from the review that captures, I think, what I’m trying to do with the series The Steep climes Quartet:

I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

I’ve been writing a lot about climate fiction and what makes a story or novel climate fiction, and the reviews coming in are helpful articulations of this question. Of course, my pending interview with them will force me to articulate my view on this question of what makes fiction climate fiction.

You can buy the latest title in The Steep Climes Quartet from many places, including through your local bookstore using Bookshop.org or by simply asking your favorite bookseller to order Over Brooklyn Hills. Or Amazon, too, Kindle or paperback. Or ePub format.

This review copied below is from Literary Titans, which describes itself as “an organization of professional editors, writers, and professors passionate about the written word. We review fiction and non-fiction books in different genres, conduct author interviews, and recognize talented authors with our monthly Literary Titan Book Award. We are privileged to work with so many creative authors around the world and help them promote their work.” 

With the advent of independent publishing, there’s been a slew of such services, but Literary Titan has managed to be early in and is well regarded. Plus, their review is quite good of my recently published Over Brooklyn Hills, the third book of The Steep climes Quartet, so that speaks well of them, I’d say. Well, of course I would say this, but you can read what they say about my newest book in the four-book series:

Over Brooklyn Hills by David Guenette is a literary climate fiction thriller set in 2035, where climate change is no longer a warning on the horizon but a daily pressure shaping politics, money, migration, housing, violence, and ordinary private life. The story follows Davin Caine, now seventy, as he moves through a Berkshire County strained by rising costs, climate migration, and civic unease, while larger threats involving fossil fuel interests, international tensions, and the climate terrorist group No One is Safe push the novel into darker territory.

Guenette isn’t just interested in disaster as spectacle. He’s interested in the way disaster becomes routine. A hot spell, a housing meeting, a town budget, a person trying to keep a home, a young worker needing air conditioning, a local government trying to respond without losing its soul. These details give the novel its weight. I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

The writing has a restless, observant quality that I found both engaging and, at times, intentionally uncomfortable. Guenette moves between characters with a wide lens, and his choices make the book feel crowded in the way real life is crowded. Davin’s reflective passages slow the story down in useful ways, giving the thriller elements more moral texture. Then the violence and conspiracy threads cut back in, sharp and ugly, reminding me that this is still a thriller with real stakes. I appreciated that balance. The book doesn’t let anyone stay clean for long, not activists, not politicians, not industries, not regular people trying to get through the week.

I would recommend Over Brooklyn Hills to readers who like climate fiction with a political pulse, especially those who want a thriller that thinks as much as it moves. It will appeal to readers who enjoy near-future stories grounded in realistic social consequences rather than end-of-the-world spectacle. If you like fiction that blends suspense, civic anxiety, personal reflection, and big-picture questions about responsibility, this book has plenty to offer.

Rating: 5

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